


the light sings in me, the birds sing it back

by cryptidgay



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Dialogue Heavy, Established Relationship, Fluff, Love Poems, M/M, Post-MAG159, Set in Episodes 159-160 | Scottish Safehouse Period, The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known, pre-MAG160, safehouse fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:48:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23218033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cryptidgay/pseuds/cryptidgay
Summary: Jon wakes with his head pillowed on Martin’s thigh and the scratching of a pen somewhere above him. Martin’s pen does not still, but his free hand begins carding through Jon’s hair. He can’t help but lean into the touch, let out a soft sigh. Martin’s laugh is gentle above him.“What’re you writing?” Jon’s voice is muffled against Martin, hazy with sleep.“Oh, nothing, just —”“Poetry?”
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 19
Kudos: 313





	the light sings in me, the birds sing it back

**Author's Note:**

> i drew [this comic](https://kayleerowena.tumblr.com/post/612329252586700800/sometimes-it-takes-finding-a-box-of-love-poems-to) a few weeks ago, and wanted to follow it up with something a bit happier, but drawing is taking a lot of energy lately. so here's a fic instead!
> 
> title from [ two (almost) haikus by @oozins on tumblr!](https://oozins.tumblr.com/post/189906912518/two-almost-haikus)

Jon wakes with his head pillowed on Martin’s thigh and the scratching of a pen somewhere above him.

He dares not move for a moment: Martin is so warm, and the quilt tucked around Jon’s shoulders is just the right amount of pressure to be lovely instead of suffocating. A half-asleep part of his mind is convinced that if he moves, he will never reclaim this warmth. There’s a fluttering in his chest, the first hesitant embers of a campfire that he has learned to name as  _ love _ .

Martin’s pen does not still, but his free hand begins carding through Jon’s hair. He can’t help but lean into the touch, let out a soft sigh. Martin’s laugh is gentle above him.

“What’re you writing?” Jon’s voice is muffled against Martin, hazy with sleep, but none of that bars the genuine curiosity in his tone. It’s nothing of Beholding and everything of  _ Jon _ himself, the way he hungers for every scrap of information he can find about Martin, taking whatever bits and pieces are offered to him gladly.

“Oh, nothing, just —”

“Poetry?” Jon recalls notebooks full of half scribbled-out words. He’d sat on the floor of the storage room leafing through the entire stack of books —  _ looking for evidence _ , he’d told himself, but it had been a flimsy excuse even then.

“Trying to, at least.” Martin laughs again, but it’s frustrated and self-depreciating this time in a way that makes Jon frown. “It’s been hard, since — you know. Like the words are caught in the fog, even when I’m not.”

“Oh,” Jon says, and feels utterly stupid that it’s all he can say. He’s never been good at comforting words, and his mind hasn’t quite caught up with him being awake yet, sluggishly moving along about five steps behind where he wants it to be. “What are you writing about?”

“Nothing,” Martin says again. Martin is a spectacular liar, something Jon admires endlessly about him, but Jon has the advantage of knowing Martin. Jon angles his head up to see the blush creeping across Martin’s face.

“Me?” It’s equal parts teasing and tender, accompanied by a smile.

Martin, eyes narrowed: “Did you… you know,  _ Know _ that?”

“No, no —” and Jon’s sitting up quickly, getting his knees under him so he can look at Martin properly. “No, I said I wasn’t going to do that. I’m not looking into your brain to spy on your writing, Martin.” It’s more solemn than a phrase like that has any right to be. He has the sudden urge to pinky swear on it, but pushes that thought back; it’s childish, and he and Martin trust each other enough without it, he hopes.

“Sorry, sorry,” Martin says. “I shouldn’t have assumed —”

Jon gets the feeling there’ll be more apologies if he doesn’t cut in, and he hasn’t properly explained himself anyways, but. It’s a bit embarrassing. How he knows. It might be embarrassing for Martin, and it’s certainly embarrassing for  _ Jon _ , but he’s already feeling the back of his neck heat up, and Martin will be wondering how he knows if not for the Eye, so.

“While you were gone,” and Jon carefully avoids the reason Martin wasn’t there, because the threat of Loneliness is so ever-present and looming that neither of them needs to be reminded, “I found a box? Of tapes. In one of the storage rooms. It, uh, it had your name on the side, and I thought maybe it would give me a clue about, you know, what you wanted me to do, with the tapes you were leaving me, so I listened to one, and, well.

“It was your poems? I mean, I’m sure you’ve gathered that.” Jon’s never been spectacular at eye contact, but right now he’s very carefully looking at a spot on the wall just to the right of Martin’s head. There’s a bit of a drip in the paint there. Whoever’d painted the safehouse hadn’t been careful enough to smooth the walls out, and they’re sort of an awful shade of beige, anyways, and Jon is focusing much more on that than on the mortifying ordeal of confessing this. “I realized that fairly quickly, but I may have listened to all of them anyways.”

His voice goes soft. “I liked hearing your voice. I’d missed it. And… well, I may be entirely obtuse to most everything when it comes to emotions, but it was difficult not to realize most of them were about me?”

It had felt like an invasion of privacy at the time, and saying it aloud doesn’t make that sense go away; if anything, Jon has the urge to bury his face in a pillow and never resurface. Martin looks a bit like he’s feeling the same way.

“Oh God,” says Martin. “I didn’t — I didn’t mean for you to hear those, they weren’t really very good, I’m sorry —”

“Martin, they were  _ wonderful _ ,” Jon interrupts. There is such a well of emotion in his voice that his sincerity couldn’t possibly be doubted, and he forces himself to look Martin in the eyes for this. “They were — they were beautiful.”

“You hate my poetry.” It’s so matter-of-fact it startles Jon. He’s done a lot of cursing his past self lately — for being so oblivious to how Martin felt, for making so many decisions that in retrospect seem  _ so foolish _ , for being so dismissive and rude to everyone around him. The knot of guilt that settles in his stomach for this may be the worst one.

“No, I don’t.”

“Jon, I heard your tapes, before —  _ relatively awful _ and  _ enamoured with Keats _ —”

“I didn’t —”

“You  _ did _ say that, Jon. I don’t hold it against you —”

“No, let me finish — I didn’t actually think that. Or, I suppose I did, but I don’t  _ anymore _ .” There was a time that Jon was very skilled at distancing himself from others, above all else —  _ Olympic gold in pushing people away _ , he recalls Georgie saying during their breakup. It was protective. For himself and for those around him, he’d convinced himself.

Lying to himself about not liking Martin’s poetry had been a small enough deception that he’d almost convinced himself it was the truth.

“Have I improved that much?” It’s somewhat teasing, but the insecurity shines through Martin’s attempts at covering it up.

“I’ve never been much for poetry,” Jon says in lieu of a real answer. “When I had to read it in uni, I suffered through it all. I get bored with flowery language. Since I was a child, I haven’t had the patience to read more than one book by the same author — their writing would get too repetitive, and then it would get dull, and then my attention would go elsewhere. You can imagine why reading a book of poems wouldn’t appeal to me, then.”

Jon takes one of Martin’s hands in his own, rubbing his thumb across Martin’s knuckles — it’s half out of a need for  _ something _ to do with his hands as he speaks and half out of a wish to comfort Martin, take care of Martin, keep Martin here with him for as long as he’s allowed.

“I sat at my desk and read every single poem in that notebook twice over, before I said what I said on that tape. I suppose I was lying to myself even then, trying to… deny how I felt.” Martin remains quiet, but Jon can see he’s aching to say something. He’s struck with the urge to kiss him, but he resists for now.

“When I found the box of poems on tapes, I sat on the ground of that storage room and I listened to all of them, one by one, until Daisy found me sitting there a few hours later. And it took, it took a few poems before I realized. Because I couldn’t imagine you writing that way, that beautifully, about  _ me _ . But there were enough details that even  _ I _ couldn’t deny it. And I’m sorry I said those things before, because they weren’t  _ true _ , you’re wonderful, and I tried to write my own but I couldn’t capture it the same way you did, and —”

“Wait, you wrote  _ poetry? _ ”

Jon’s been working, this past week, on cataloguing all the different ways Martin smiles at him. This fond amusement is one of his favorites, even if it’s making him unbelievably flustered at the moment, shifting his gaze sharply down to their joint hands.

“After I found the box. I tried to — I needed to find  _ some _ way to get all those feelings out. And I thought, writing seemed to work for you, so maybe… But I was rubbish at it. Awful, really. Kindergarten level sonnets —”

“ _ Sonnets? _ ”

“Of course, sonnets, I need some form to use —”

“Jon, none of my poems were  _ sonnets _ .”

“I know, but,” Jon protests. He’s cut short by Martin’s laughter, Martin tugging him forward until Jon’s leaning his head on Martin’s shoulder and laughing as well.

He presses his lips to the closest bit of skin he can reach, the side of Martin’s neck, and he smiles against the warmth there.

“I’d love to read them,” Martin says, and Jon shakes his head.

“Burned them,” Jon says. “Couldn’t leave any evidence that I was having  _ emotions _ . God forbid anyone found them.”

“Ah, so you’re allowed to stumble across  _ my _ confessions of love, but I’m not allowed to find yours? Seems to me you’ve got double standards, Jon.”

Jon sighs. “If I ever decide to foray back into the written word, I  _ suppose _ I’ll let you see.”

Martin presses a kiss to Jon’s temple. Even after a week, it makes Jon melt: the thought that he can  _ have this _ , that Martin is real and solid beside him, that he is in love and that love is returned. Things are going to hell in London, but here in the Scottish highlands, everything is at peace.

“I would love that,” Martin says softly.

“Could I hear what you’ve been working on?” Jon’s hesitant to even ask, as sheepish as Martin had been even telling Jon what he was doing. Jon’s glasses are somewhere on the bedside table, and he can’t make out any words when he looks down at the page, but he sees a  _ lot _ of crossed-out words.

“It’s not really any good,” Martin says, and Jon gives him a sharp look that translates roughly to  _ if you say anything more to insult yourself I will argue, and I will win the argument. _ Martin rolls his eyes. “I’m out of practice, Jon, it’s been  _ months _ since I’ve written anything — but if you really want to —”

“I do really want to,” Jon cuts in.

“Alright, then.”

The poem Martin’s working on does turn out to be a sonnet. It’s as lovely as Jon expected it to be, though he might be biased; it seems, at the moment, that he could be perfectly content laying in bed with Martin and listening to him read poetry all day, sunlight streaming through the half-translucent curtains and birdsong outside.

For now, they have nothing better to do. Perhaps he will.

**Author's Note:**

> fourth day of social distancing + five days until the s5 trailer = me, writing two tender jonmartin fics in as many days, to cope.
> 
> thanks so much for reading, please leave a comment if you enjoyed it so we can all get in our daily recommended dose of social interaction in the time of quarantine! hmu on tumblr @ [gertrudeagnes!](http://gertrudeagnes.tumblr.com)


End file.
